Vent d'Autan

Looking lovely in the garden now is the Purple Velvet Bean vine, Mucuna cyclocarpa. This lowland native to Southeastern China makes a superb deciduous vine that flowers non-stop from mid-summer until fall. To us, the bizarre fleshy flower clusters look like those characters from the old Fruit of the Loom […]

Plant Physiology and Development, International seventh edition by Lincoln Taiz, Ian Max Møller, Angus Murphy & Eduardo Zeiger, 2023. Oxford University Press Higher Education Division. I don’t usually comment on pricing information for the books I review. Those books were generally not ones they may have felt they had to […]

Below are three of our final selections of Agave x ovox, which we made out of several hundred seedlings. These are each sister seedlings from our cross of Agave ovatifolia x Agave pseudoferox ‘Bellville’ It’s always interesting to see how many different ways the genes sort out. These are from […]

Spring wildflowers carpeting European forests could be in for an uncertain future due to climate change, according to new research. An international team of scientists led by Radosław Puchałka at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland found that common forest floor flowers currently blooming across the continent may respond very differently […]

This spring, I was fortunate to be able to visit the former garden of the late Camellia guru, Dr. Clifford Parks. One of the many plants that took our breath away was this unlabeled evergreen azalea. We were able to root cuttings, but now, I’m hoping someone out there in […]

Getting reacquainted with nature could be as easy as a walk in your local park, thanks to a new concept for creating informal botanical gardens throughout cities. Maya Melhem and colleagues recently published a study in Scientific Reports explaining how underutilised green spaces can be transformed into “Ancillary Botanic Gardens”, […]

Everyone grows the Asian butterfly bushes because of their huge flower panicles, but there are some really cool native buddleias that are mostly overlooked. Below is Buddleia marrubifolia from Presidio, Texas. Native to the Chihuahuan Desert, mature plants can reach 6′ tall x 6′ wide. The hairy white foliage serves […]

The Sierra San Pedro Mártir (SSPM) is a mountain range in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. The forest on the SSPM appears simple, dominated by Pinus jeffreyi and other conifers. Its understory is mostly sparse, with ample space between the large, thick-barked pines. Being used […]

While I decide what to do with Talking Plants, I’ll post a few interesting news stories with a screen shot you can click to get to the full story. 

We’re always disappointed when great plants don’t sell well enough to continue offering them, and one of our best examples is Microlepia ‘MacFaddeniae’. Below is our clump in the garden this week. This California selection of the Japanese native rigid … Continue reading → The post Microlepia…one of our favorite […]

Tracing the phylogenetic patterns in native edible plants of Mexico shows how indigenous cultures have sustainably utilized regional botanical diversity for millennia. Díaz-Toribio and colleagues recently published a paper in AoB PLANTS about the evolutionary relationships and usage patterns of edible native plants in the Gulf of Mexico region. Their […]

We are thrilled at the performance of the little-known banana, Musa nagesium var. hongii. Our plants are from the recently discovered population in Northeast India, which is a good jaunt from the formerly known populations in Yunnan, China. These sailed through our cold winter, and have exploded in growth during […]

Our clump of Coniogramme emeiense ‘Green Energy’ is looking fabulous at the end of August. This is one of our selections of bamboo fern we’ve yet to introduce. We love it’s distinctive look, but am not sure if anyone would actually purchase it. What say you? Hardiness Zone 7b – […]

I. Origin of Land Plants: when green algae crawled out of water. Evolutionary Timescale of Life on Earth Scientists estimate that microscopic life emerged on planet Earth more than 4 billion years ago, right after the formation of the oceans. Embryophytes (Bryophytes or non-vascular plants and Tracheophytes or vascular plants), commonly known […]

What would you say if I told you that virtually everything you know as a mimosa, isn’t? In fact, the commonly known mimosa is actually an albizzia. Albizzia julibrissin, native from Japan through to the Transcaucuses, was brought to the US back in the 1700s as an ornamental. Back in […]

Image information: This image of an Andrena bee gathering pollen from the stamens of a rose by Debivort is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Yes, plants are pollinated by insects*. And, surely, that’s something that everybody who reads posts about plant biology on the Botany […]

Looking and smelling wonderful in the garden this week is our 2022 introduction, Hosta ‘Summer Snowstorm’. We love late-flowering hostas with large fragrant flowers, and this one doesn’t disappoint, with foliage that still looks great in late summer. Hosta ‘Summer Snowstorm’ Like this: Like Loading…

No matter how old or where it’s from, frozen sunflower pollen helps bumblebees fight off a common gut parasite that threatens bee health and pollination. Bumblebees play a critical role as pollinators, but their populations are declining in many areas. One major threat is infection by parasites like Crithidia bombi, which […]

Flowering now in the garden is one of our favorite crinum lily species, the South African native, Crinum buphanoides. The name comes from its resemblance to another South African member of the Amaryllid family, the less winter hardy, Boophane. Despite a few folks who tell us they’ve had trouble growing […]

Cutting down big old trees in an Australian park led to fewer birds and possums as well as lower appreciation of the park from people, revealing the outsized ecological and social values of mature urban trees. A new study by Camilo Ordóñez and colleagues with the ambitious title “Quantifying the […]

Here’s an example from JLBG, of how plant colors, textures, and forms can be used to create a garden vignette. The foreground is Tradescantia pallida (purple), Berberis thunbergii ‘Sunjoy Gold Beret’, Colocasia ‘Coal Miner’, Pennisetum orientale ‘Tall Tails’, and Albizia julibrissin ‘Chocolate Fountain’. The frame is backed with Vitex agnus-castus […]

Image information: Photograph of banana peel by Priwo de Benutzer, who has released it into the public domain. Having published a piece about plastics recently, I was not expecting to pen another one quite so soon. But, plastic pollution is a major and persistent problem on our planet – on […]

We have a large collection of silphiums at JLBG, but unfortunately most have limited garden value since they splay apart and often completely fall over when in flower. While they’re loved by native bees, we have been frustrated to not find many that are mainstream garden worthy. One that has […]

According to a recent study, vulnerable quokkas avoid prescribed burn areas for months, but unburned patches provide critical refuge for the displaced marsupials. A new study published by Povh and colleagues in the International Journal of Wildland Fire has revealed how individual quokkas, a threatened marsupial species, respond to prescribed burns in […]

No garden is complete without at least one rudbeckia. Looking good in the garden now is the lovely Rudbeckia umbrosa. Formerly recognized as a a subspecies of the more commonly grown Rudbeckia fulgida, this is a very different plant that’s taller, and with very hairy foliage. For us, this moist […]

Rowan by Oliver Southall, 2023. Reaktion Books. What is the connection between an angiosperm whose leaves “arranged around a dark black void … evoke portals to the spiritual otherworld” (p. 198), Scotland’s highest-altitude tree [as of 15th June 2023] (Sarah Watts, British & Irish Botany 5(2): 167-179, 2023),* Boris Pasternak’s […]

One of the many hardy sinningias that has really impressed us during the last few years is Sinningia ‘Amethyst Tears’. Here is our garden clump, flowering its head off in the middle of August. You’ve probably never heard of this, since it’s an unintroduced Yucca Do selection from plantsman Wade […]

Fungus gnats like red flowers with short stamens and a strong smell of acetoin, and scientists found that Euonymus plants have evolved these traits to attract these flies for pollination. Dipteran insects, commonly known as flies, are known pollinators of many angiosperms. However, little is known about how flies affect […]

More lycoris continue to open every day. Their flowering season coincides quite close with the hurricane season. These amazing amaryllids pop up almost overnight, sans foliage. If you’re curious to take a deep dive into the genus, check out our lycoris study gallery Lycoris chinensis is a spring-leaf species from […]

Termite nest in a dead Banksia, by Margaret R Donald [Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]. A few plants, such as Amorphophallus species (Cyrille Claudel et al.) and Arum maculatum (Anneke Wagner et al.), are dramatically thermogenic with the capacity to increase their temperature well above that of their […]

Raise your hand if you’ve grown the Southeast native perennial, piriqueta. Piriqueta caroliniana is a little-known Southeast US native that hails from NC, south to Florida. Botanically, it’s a member of the Turneraceae family, after being unceremoniously booted from its previous home in the passiflora family, Passifloraceae. We had never […]

A new study has uncovered the lasting impact of historical shipping practices on the plant diversity of New Jersey. Analysing records of species first reported over 150 years ago, Ryan Schmidt and colleagues at Rutgers University found that solid ballast materials used to stabilise sailing ships introduced over 260 new […]

Looking great in mid August is Hedychium spicatum. This is a ginger lily species we saw throughout our late 1990s travels in Yunnan, China. Pictured below are our 3 year old seed-grown specimen, which has already become a massive 5′ tall x 10′ wide. The flower is much smaller than […]

Functional-structural root architecture models (FSRMs) can be used to select root traits that optimize plant performance under specific environmental conditions. Current simulators differ in the way they (1) represent the way the processes are captured and translated into mathematical equations; (2) solve mathematical problems by their choice of analytical or […]

Begonia ‘Caribbean Star’ is looking excellent in our begonia garden trials, despite our 11 degree F. winter. This fascinating Tim Anderson (Palm Hammock Orchid Estate) hybrid was made widely available thanks to begoniaphile, John Boggan. Our 2′ tall x 2′ wide ‘plants have been in the ground since 2019, although […]

This image of soybeans is a work of a United States Department of Agriculture employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties, and is therefore in the public domain. Amongst humankind, there has always been conflict between the omnivores (who eat a varied diet including animal and […]

We have long loved the evergreen, tri-lobed, Asian (China, Korea, Japan) epiphytic fern, Pyrrosia hastata. Our favorite clone, pictured below, is one we purchased many years ago from an on-line Japanese plant auction, and subsequently named Pyrrosia ‘Storm Watch’, due to its dark black central leaf vein. Unlike the rhizomatous […]

Spain is home to many herbaceous species that are naturalised in other Mediterranean-climate regions of the world (Casado et al. 2018). The origin of these introductions can be tracked down to the arrival of the first Europeans settlers into these territories where species were introduced deliberately (i.e. crops, ornamental plants) […]

Through the years, we’ve trialed 27 different clones of Amorphophallus krausei in the garden for winter hardiness, but only two have consistently survived. The largest is a 2005 Alan Galloway collection from from Son La, Vietnam. Here it is in the garden this week with the 5′ tall flower spikes. […]

It is reasonably well understood that plants need a range of chemical elements to ensure that they grow and develop properly and can complete a full life cycle. Those elements, called nutrients in this plant-nourishing context, are broadly divided into two categories, those that are needed in relatively large amounts […]

It’s that time of year, when the surprise lilies, Lycoris, that we have scattered throughout the garden begin to pop. Actually, due to our early summer rains, they began popping in early July this year, 2-3 weeks ahead of normal. Surprise lilies are divided into two groups, based on when […]

The parasitic dodder weed doesn’t just sap soybean’s strength alone – it lets in fungal gatecrashers like Alternaria too, despite soybean’s attempts to biochemically barricade its roots with flavonoids. A new study published in Agronomy by Wen Luo and colleagues reveals how the parasitic plant dodder (Cuscuta chinensis) impacts the […]

Before I entertain you with the Chilean Tree of Wizards, a word from the author.  As most of you know, I finish up at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria this week, having announced a few months ago my intent to do more writing and talking in praise of plants. Contrarily, perhaps, […]

The North American native Thuja plicata ‘4Ever’ is looking particularly stunning in the garden this summer. Of all the forms of Thuja plicata we’ve trialed, this is undoubtedly the brightest. Reportedly maturing at 12′ tall x 3.5′ tall, I’m left to wonder what they used the measure the size. Our […]

The Power of Trees: How ancient forests can save us if we let them by Peter Wohlleben, 2023. Greystone Books. I’ve not read The Hidden life of trees by Peter Wohlleben. However, I am aware that it – and its author – has received criticism and created some controversy (e.g. […]

We’ve tried a number of Caryopteris x clandonensis cultivars over the years, and most fail to survive more than one of our hot, humid summers. One recent exception that surpassed all of our expectations is the amazing Caryopteris ‘Gold Crest’. Below is a mid-July image from the garden. From the […]

Does it matter how green a city is if you can’t see any green where you are? Utopia may look something like the Emerald City if we take a recent study by Camilo Ordóñez and colleagues and really run with it. The researchers set out to understand how Toronto residents’ […]

I wrote a short note about my friend Pam Harper, who passed away last week, but wanted to share a little more. Below are a couple of her amazing selections of Arum italicum, that she shared through the years. The … Continue reading → The post Pam’s Arum’s appeared first […]

La recherche montre que Bishop Pines ne prend que huit ans pour rebondir après un incendie en produisant d’abondantes graines viables dans les cônes de la cime des arbres. Le brûlage dirigé est de plus en plus utilisé dans les forêts de l’ouest des États-Unis pour restaurer les régimes de […]

L’amélioration des plantes est un passe-temps merveilleux qui attire un éventail d’amateurs, ainsi que des professionnels des plantes. De nombreuses plantes, telles que l’hémérocalle, l’hosta, l’hibiscus et l’iris, sont si faciles qu’elles attirent la majorité des éleveurs amateurs. Les professionnels et les sélectionneurs les plus fous se concentrent parfois sur […]